The Route 140 property known for its trademark purple dinosaur is available for sale or lease, according to the Burlington-based investment development company that owns the 42-acre site.

The asking price is $6.5 million, said Scott Kelly, executive vice president of RJ Kelly Company.

Kelly’s brother, Brandon, in 2006 told the Taunton Daily Gazette he had high hopes for adding a Bugaboo Creek Steak House and a 80-plus-room hotel. But that was a year before the housing bubble burst and the economy went into a recession.

The Kelly family bought the Taunton site in 1996 and eventually mounted the imposing-looking Tyrannosaurus rex as a mascot of sorts for its Rangeway Golf Driving and Mini Golf course.

The property sits close to the on-ramp for Route 24 and abuts a large facility owned and operated by Wisconsin-based catalog manufacturer QuadGraphics.

Scott Kelly said the golfing facility, which is now chained shut, never reopened this season. He said children and parents used the miniature golf course, but that interest in the driving course waned as far back as the mid-2000’s.

“We thought the interest in Tiger Woods would make a difference, but golf isn’t as easy as it looks; it takes a lot of practice,” Kelly, 40, said.

He said keeping the range facility open had simply become a losing venture.

But Kelly said the industrial-zoned property remains an ideal location for any number of businesses, including a small hotel along the lines of a Comfort Inn.

The land is now permitted for use as a hotel or motel, but not a restaurant, he said. The golf range and course, he said, encompasses 12 acres of upland, but he notes that there is substantial land in the rear that can be utilized.

Kelly said when the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe first proposed plans for an East Taunton hotel-casino resort nearly two years ago, his phone immediately “rang off the hook.”

But two solid offers to buy the site faded away, he said, once it became clear the tribe would face a lengthy hurdle in getting federal approval to put land into trust.

“Once they realized it wasn’t a sure bet those opportunities and investors backed off,” Kelly said.

RJ Kelly also previously owned the Stor-U-Self storage facility at 33 Chandler Ave. but sold it in 2006. Kelly said he tried buying it back when the storage facility rebounded, but was outbid by a powerhouse in the industry called Extra Space Storage.

Former Taunton economic development director Dick Shafer, who since retiring has worked as a contract employee project manager for the not-for-profit Taunton Development Corporation, said “it will be interesting” to see who becomes the next owner or tenant of the County Street/Route 140 property.

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Kelly said a hotel would be successful whether a casino is ever built. And he said if a commuter rail service is ever established between Boston, Taunton and Fall River, it also would add to its inherent value.

One of the rail-station stops in the proposed rail plan would behind the Target store, which sits be fairly close to the purple dinosaur site.

Kelly said he, his brothers and their father, who started the firm in 1951, continue to own and operate a miniature golf/driving range in Billerica and a mini-golf-only range in Salisbury.